Trump Accuses Clinton of Guiding Global Elite Against U.S. Working Class

Donald J. Trump on Thursday accused Hillary Clinton of guiding a “global power structure” that has rigged the economy against the working class, language that some suggested echoed anti-Semitic themes.

Mr. Trump made the accusation in a speech in West Palm Beach, Fla., in which he also defended himself against several accusations of sexual harassment, published by The New York Times and others.

Early in the speech, he said that a global elite had “stripped” the United States of its wealth in order to line the pockets of corporate and political interests. “The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure,” he said.

“We’ve seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors,” he said, referring to the group that has, most recently, published thousands of hacked emails from Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman.

The remarks drew criticism from some who said they resembled prejudicial language used by anti-Semites.

“Whether intentionally or not, Donald Trump is evoking classic anti-Semitic themes that have historically been used against Jews and still reverberate today,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights discrimination, said in a statement.

Image

A man held a sign toward members of the news media as he attended Mr. Trump’s rally in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday.CreditJoe Raedle/Getty Images

Mr. Greenblatt said the group feared that white supremacists might see the comments as tacit encouragement.

“Mr. Trump focused on the very issues and themes that obsess conspiratorial anti-Semites: They believe that there is an elite group of Jews who control the media, the government, and banking, and who are trying to destroy white America,” he said. “They also believe that most of Hillary Clinton’s donors are Jewish.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Others drew a more direct comparison between Mr. Trump’s words and those of anti-Semites.

In the speech, Mr. Trump also accused the “Clinton machine” of wielding control over the news media, as well.

“The most powerful weapon deployed by the Clintons is the corporate media, the press,” he said to jeers from the audience.

While the allegations were aimed at Mrs. Clinton, who is a Methodist, Jews have long been accused of conspiring to control institutions like banks and the media in order to amass wealth and power.

In 1931, for example, the author A. N. Field described the creation of the American Federal Reserve as the moment the “German-Jew engine of control” enslaved the United States, according to the Anti-Defamation League. That conspiracy theory has survived the ensuing decades and, even today, such anti-Semitic beliefs remain prevalent around the world, according to A.D.L. polling.

In West Palm Beach on Thursday, reporters covering Mr. Trump returned to a table reserved for the press to find a sign bearing a swastika and the word “MEDIA” scrawled on it, Jim Acosta, a senior CNN White House correspondent, reported.